She reached for her coffee cup, ignoring the deck of cards stacked beside it. The coffee had grown cold. She put down the cup, and with a sweep of her hand, she spread out the cards.
But she wouldn’t turn them over, not yet. She was afraid of what they might tell her.
Julie met Kayla and Aggie coming from the surf shop. “Any luck?”
“Not really,” Aggie said. “The best we could get was that he should be back any day and to go check at the bar.”
“We did get a few weird looks,” Kayla added. “You’d think they’d be used to seeing tourists.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s because we know Uncle Tony,” Julie said.
“I guess it was a dead end with the bartender?” Aggie said.
“Big time. I can’t remember meeting someone that clueless and obnoxious.”
“Who’s your friend?” Kayla asked at the same time something bumped against Julie’s leg.
Julie looked down. “It’s Dougie, the slobbering bar dog.”
Dougie rubbed his matted ear against her thigh.
Julie edged away. “You probably have fleas, and your bartender friend is a pain in my butt.”
“He needs a haircut,” Kayla said.
“He needs a total makeover,” Julie said.
“What?”
“Oh, you mean Dougie.”
“He’s friendly,” Aggie said, and bent down to scratch his ears.
Dougie backed away.
Aggie stood. “I guess he’s a one-woman dog.”
Oh, great, Julie thought. Now she was picking up strays.
Chapter 4
Okay, that was just weird, Zoe thought as she walked down the sidewalk away from the inn. She stopped at the corner to regroup and take a look around. The town was as charming in daylight as it had been busy the night before. A jumble of row houses and stand-alones had been built, or repurposed, as the business district. Not an empty storefront that she could see.
Successful and busy.
She had to wait for several cars to pass, then crossed the street. She walked past a boutique that displayed colorful beachwear. Next to it, the window mannequins were clothed in basic black and designer labels. An antiques store, a gourmet deli, a cigar store, a pub featuring live music. That was tempting—would have been tempting, under ordinary circumstances. In Manhattan, she sat in with the house band at her favorite bar at least once a week when she wasn’t traveling.
She came to Kelly’s Diner—presumably the same Kelly whose driveway she’d be using—wedged between a store named Babykins, Infant Couture and a beach accessories shop. At the end of the block a bookstore named Book Nook was housed in a white frame cottage.
Usually with some time off, she’d have peered in the windows, gone inside to browse. She was always looking for little gifts for her co-workers or her family, or bargains for herself. But today she wasn’t tempted. Between her doorway confrontation with that old rocker and the duty that lay ahead of her, she had no patience for shopping.
The day was warm—there wasn’t a breeze to temper the high-riding sun—and she stood at the curb wishing she’d stopped at the deli for a bottle of water.
Kitty-cornered from where she stood, a quaint white clapboard church was shaded by two giant trees. A glass-covered sign welcomed all to their services. Zoe’s family had never been very religious, though there was something about the ritual of it all that appealed to Zoe. And the music. Churches might get some things wrong, but they sure knew how to do music.
But not for her, not today anyway. Today she was looking for a beach. She crossed the street before she could change her mind. She was suddenly anxious to get this trip over with. And at the same time dreading what she might find—or not find. Please don’t make me have to go back to hand the ashes over to Errol like he had demanded before I left.
She passed a big white house on the corner that had been converted into offices. Then another large house, also painted white. A third house was a little stone cottage with the white wishing well in front that Mel had told her about. It looked out of place next to the stately old homes.
Beyond it was the undeveloped lot Mel called Little Woods. Zoe turned down the drive, hugging the far side, where the trees sheltered her from the sun and, to be truthful, where she could avoid any confrontations with the homeowners. The drive was paved as far as the Kellys’ garage; then the pavement gave way to cracking and heaving, before giving way to a stony, rutted car path.
It was a pleasant walk in spite of whatever might be facing her at the end, but foremost in her mind was Don’t tell them I’m staying at the inn. Floret and Mel’s great-grandmother were adversaries. She fervently hoped she wasn’t going to be welcomed with a shotgun and the feuding Hatfields. Or would it be the McCoys?
Still, she wasn’t prepared for the sight that met her at the end of the drive. The yard was an open space of knee-high weeds and hard dirt, with a rusted station wagon—probably left over from the hippie era—sitting idle off to one side. Straight ahead, a few straggly shrubs tangled against a sagging picket fence across the front of a three-story leaning tower of dilapidation.
Wind Chime House. The name was painted on a white wooden sign on the gate.
She had reached her destination.
Eve leaned back in her desk chair and rubbed her scalp. Curiosity had driven her to the office computer. Not just curiosity, but unease. Her father’s agitation had settled in her. And she didn’t like it.
She’d spent a childhood trying to hold him to the earth, to family, to her.
She didn’t miss her mother, most of the time. She’d never known her, so she didn’t really see how she could miss her. Maybe it was just the idea of a mother that left a little piece of Eve always longing.
Being brought up at the commune, she’d lived around other kids whose parents weren’t married and some who were raising their kids on their own. Those were the days when people “hooked up,” long before the hookups of today. Strangers who passed—and made love—in the night. No one missed their other parent; some didn’t even know who they were. And didn’t care.
Until they went to school in town.
School had been hard. The town kids made fun of the commune kids, and the parents disapproved of their lifestyle, their clothes, their morals—their otherness. So they’d stuck together. There had been six or seven of them in the early days, but gradually they’d all moved away, except Eve.
Eve had lived with her grandmother at the commune until she was thirteen. It was a lonely time. Her father was usually away on tour. Her grandmother was busy building her real estate empire; meetings and travel kept her away almost as often as Eve’s father. It fell on Floret and Henry to nurture Eve as best they could, though they had no children themselves.
Eve loved them for it. Henry was a scientist who taught her about the stars and the mysteries of the universe. Floret was a mystery unto herself, but she loved plants and animals and Eve, and knew how to make hurt go away, of knees and stomachs and hearts.
Then one day, Hannah—or Granna, as Eve called her—had returned home. There was an argument with Floret, then Granna came and told her to pack her things. They’d moved into town that very afternoon. No explanation.